


Coming Home Again

by AllISeeAreGems, Venn364



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora has PTSD, Angst, God you guys are going to hate us for how slow this will burn, Like so much angst, Modern AU, Modern(ish) AU, Multi, Slow Burn, Trans Catra (She-Ra), Will Add More Later, it'll hit you hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:29:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18482878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllISeeAreGems/pseuds/AllISeeAreGems, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venn364/pseuds/Venn364
Summary: A stormy night brings old flames together again. But has the fire been dimmed or can it be rekindled again?





	Coming Home Again

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally put together by myself and a friend on Discord but they've fallen off due to RL issues and I wanted to keep the story going. Enjoy! Edit: My co-author is back and we're gonna try and get you wonderful folks more chapters as soon as possible! Thank you for your patience and your enjoyment of our work so far!

Rain pattering against the window, an erratic heavy rhythm of a torrential downpour. The sound outside was only matched by the sounds of muted conversation and human activity through the paper thin walls of the apartment.

Catra worked at her computer, silently hating every last idiot who called her phone line. She listened to the rain outside her windows, the only thing coming close to drowning her latest customer out. Her reverie was broken by the sound of a soft knocking at her door, bringing her back to reality with a loud growl of frustration.

Slamming the hold button on her keyboard, she threw the headsets aside, ready to give this late night intruder a piece of her mind. 

Storming to the door in a way that no doubt would have her downstairs neighbors complain, she reached out and gripped the handle tightly. She wrenched the knob and flung the door open, the worst of her anger and bile bubbling to the surface as the first vestiges of a curse forms on her lips.

It died almost immediately as she registered just who it is on her doorstep, draped in a soaking wet hoodie and a dirty worn kit bag hanging limply from her hand. She tilts her head, looking under the hood to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. 

It was her.

Adora

“Hey Catra.” She smiles weakly, a deep hurting evident in her tone and gaze. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”  
\------  
"Adora?" Catra wasn’t entirely sure if what she was seeing was real. 

How could it be real when the last time she'd seen Adora had been just over four and a half years previously. The sound of hurtful words (from both sides) and the slamming door still haunted her dreams. Had she fallen asleep at the computer? It wouldn't be the first time...

But dream Adora had never looked like this, somehow impossibly small and broken despite an obvious increase to the muscles that lined her frame. She'd always looked the same, 18 and young and angry at the injustice of a world that dared deny them everything they’d ever wanted.

Catra stepped aside, gesturing wordlessly for Adora to enter and tried to ignore the numbness that clenched like a vice around her soul  
\-----  
She watched as Adora shambled in like a zombie out of a bad horror flick, not even bothering to take off her hoodie before she sits down on the old couch. Her mind struggles to say something, anything to this shell that used to be her friend.

“So...” she says dumbly, stumbling her way to a sentence. “How’ve you been?”

Adora simply looks at her for a moment or two, as if not really registering where she was or who was with her.

“Oh... yeah, I’ve been okay. Got discharged a couple weeks ago.” She replies, finally pulling the hood back on her hoodie, damp hair plastered to her skull as she runs a hand over it. “Got a medal before they did though.” 

Catra watches her reach for her kit bag, mechanically unzipping pocket after pocket to find it. She notices her starting to tremble more and more as she takes longer to find the medal. 

“It was here,”she mumbles, starting to rip apart her bag more frantically, spilling contents everywhere. “It was right fucking here!”  
\-----  
Catra watches the woman who had been her best friend sift desperately through the wreckage on the floor, Adora’s trembling progressing to a full on shake as she continued. Catra spots a small velvet box amongst the debris on the floor, kneeling to pick it up she watches Adora with wary eyes and tries quietly, calmly, to get her attention “Hey”

“It was fucking here” Adora hasn’t noticed, so consumed with the search that the whole world has dropped away “I know it was here! I put it in the bag. I checked so many times” 

There’s a sound that could have been a sob if it weren’t so broken and Catra reached out on instinct “Adora-”. She doesn’t quite see Adora move, one moment Catra’s hand brushes against Adora’s shoulder, the next she’s being shoved forcefully away, overbalancing on her heels for a few seconds before landing on her back. Pain in Catra’s shoulder threatens a bruise in the near future and a sharp edge pressing into her side reminds her that she’d forgotten to clean up after the last tech repair job. 

She rights herself quickly enough, hand clenching the simple velvet box and watching Adora seeming to disappear inside herself as her friend stared at her own arm in a kind of disconnected terror. “Adora”, she stretches out her arm, palm low and open. Adora starts suddenly, eyes finally meeting Catra’s, “Is this it?”  
\-----  
She sees a little bit of the light start to come back into Adora’s eyes, comprehension slowly filling her face at what she had done. Slowly, the taller woman knelt down amongst the detritus of her military career, hands carefully cupping the small velvet box as if it would shatter if handled wrong. 

“I-I’m sorry…” Adora begins to say, finally starting to sound like an actual human being again. Carefully placing the box into the front pocket of her hoodie, she hesitated for a moment before reaching out to Catra, gingerly helping her back onto her feet. “I… I just thought.”

“It’s fine.” the other replied quickly, stifling a hiss of pain as Adora’s hand touched her bruised shoulder. The hand reflexively pulled back, worry working it’s way back into her face as Catra got the floor back under her. Turning her attention back to the clothing and bits of miscellanea around her, she began to carefully put it all back together, trying to make some semblance of order again.

“Do you want any help?” Catra asked after a few more awkward moments of silence, her hand still rubbing the sore spot on her shoulder subconsciously.  
\--------  
Adora shook her head, not looking away from where she was methodically replacing the gear back into her kit bag “It’s fine,” Catra could see how Adora’s hands trembled, how she fumbled with the zips on the bag “I’m fine”

Bullshit

Slowly, the mess Adora had made on the floor cleared to reveal the ugly brownish carpet beneath that Catra uncharitably thought had probably looked better when it couldn’t be seen at all. Catra watched Adora through the silence, wondering what had happened to make her flinch away at a touch and tremble so badly under stress. 

Adora packed away a coil of rope and Catra suddenly remembered laughing with Adora as they compared her height to a length of hemp. Adora had still been growing like a weed at 18 and Catra wondered how long that trend had continued. She wondered just when Adora had changed her hair from a simple ponytail to the undercut she now sported, wondered where her first and truest friend had gotten the twin scars that slashed across her right cheek and under her chin, if there were other scars to match in places she couldn't see. 

If Adora had missed Catra even half as much as Catra had missed her.

“Adora”, blue eyes met Catra’s own mismatched pair and she hardened her resolve “Why are you here?”  
\------  
Adora simply sat there quietly, closing her eyes and breathing deeply in and out for a few beats, trying to collect her thoughts for long enough to be coherent. A monumental effort if there ever was one.

“It started after I got discharged,” She began, fidgeting with her ring finger as she spoke, slowly rubbing it from knuckle joint to nail. “I walked out the doors of the VA and I just started walking. First it was to the end of the block, then to the bus terminal and from there… Fuck… It all just started to blur for a few days.” Her hands cupped her face and swept back slowly, feeling the fuzz of her undercut under her palms and the jagged lines of her scars. 

“One station to the next, sleeping on platforms, waiting for the next bus or train… Before I knew it was two whole cities away from where I started, wandering around until I found my way here.” She looked back up at Catra, tears forming in the corner of her deep blue eyes as her voice began to break. “Then I’m here, you’re on the floor looking at me like I’m the fucking boogeyman…”

She suddenly grabbed her repacked bag and started to walk back to the door, trying not to break down sobbing as she went. “I should go. This was a mistake…”  
\--------  
Panic seized Catra, the moment overlapping itself with their last in her memory as Adora, bag half slung over one shoulder, opened the door. The panicked “Wait!” was unexpected for the both of them, Adora looking at the suddenly dumbstruck Catra like a deer caught in headlights. 

The light from the hall streamed into Catra’s poorly lit apartment and instead of finding the words she needed all Catra could think of was how she hadn’t properly cleaned in months. 

“I-” Adora couldn’t leave, “I-” not like this “I just-” not again. 

She took a breath, counted back from ten like Scorpia was always saying should help and tried again. Found herself wanting. “You should at least stay the night. Get yourself dry.” Catra made a show of sneering disdainfully at Adora’s sopping jacket, “Jeeze, tell me you at least own an umbrella”

Adora hesitated and shook her head. Catra stiffened, prepared to argue all night if that’s what it took to get Adora to stay. But Adora didn’t leave, didn’t argue, instead she stepped back into the apartment and allowed the door to close behind her. Taking a steadying breath of her own Adora squared her shoulders in a way that tugged painfully at Catra’s memory of their shared youth. 

“Do you even have anywhere I could sleep?” A fond half-smile crept slowly across her face “I think the train platforms were cleaner”  
\------  
The night passed quietly for a while, Catra emailed her supervisor to let them know she was logging out early to deal with an emergency. Meanwhile, Adora was in the bathroom stripping out of her sopping wet clothes and having her first real shower in what felt like an eternity. She could feel the water run down the scars on her back and arms, over her muscles and through her hair. She’d turned it up as hot as it would go, letting the steaming water hit her as if she were trying to cleanse herself of something. But she couldn’t honestly say what.

A knock on the bathroom door brought her back to reality, followed closely by the voice of her friend on the other side. “Hey, I hope you don’t mind but I made up the pullout on the couch for you.” Catra said, her voice muffled by the door and the sound of the falling water. “I still have some of your pajamas in my dresser if you need something to wear. Just leave your wet stuff by the hamper and I’ll take it to the laundry room in the basement tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She called back, silently thankful to the other for bringing her back to reality. Quickly she began to wash and scrub herself from head to toe, letting the suds and water rinse away the cumulative filth and sweat she had built up over her two week trip back to some semblance of sanity. 

“... Hey, Catra?” She called out again, her voice soft and apologetic. “Thanks again. I really appreciate this.”

There was a pause behind the door, a soft sigh as a weight settled against the frame. “It’s okay. Just trying to do something right for once between us.”  
\----------  
The night finally began to wind down, Adora clean and feeling fresher than she had been in a long time, dressed in her old high school sweatpants and the formerly oversized rock band shirt she and Catra had gotten in junior year. She could see Catra shutting her work computer down for the night as she set herself down on the pullout, the room dimming significantly as the screen finally turned off. It still felt slightly unreal that she was there; part of her was still expecting to be woken up by a train station employee telling her to shove off the bench she had dozed off on. 

“Alright, I’m headed to bed,” Catra yawned loudly, the buzz of caffeine she had from her last energy drink finally fading away. She paused for a bit at the couch, the urge to reach out and hug Adora fighting inside her along with the fear of what would happen if she did. In the end, all she could manage was a short, awkward ‘G’night’ as she went off to her bedroom.

“‘Night.” was the response from Adora, the springs of the pullout creaking slightly as she pulled herself under the covers. As the last of the lights clicked off, dark descended on the apartment, the patter of the storm outside the only sound in the room.


End file.
